Recovering, physically, from a caesarean usually takes longer than recovering from a vaginal delivery.
The experience of the days following birth is often very different. The average stay in hospital after a caesarean is four days, compared to one to two for a vaginal birth.
Once home, you are advised to avoid many activities, such as driving, until you have had your postnatal check-up with the doctor at 6 weeks. With the demands of a newborn, wound care, and the other physical realities of the postnatal period to contend with, such limitations can be challenging.
How can you support yourself through those first 40 days? Here are some ideas.
Wound Care
Your wound will form a scar.
This will likely be obvious at first, but usually fades over time.
After leaving hospital, a midwife should visit at home to check your wound and remove the dressing, if you still have one.
The midwife will also remove stitches or clips after about five days, unless dissolvable stitches were used.
Once any dressing has been removed, you should clean and dry the wound every day to avoid infection.
Signs of infection in wound:
– a high temperature
– feeling generally unwell
– wound becomes red, swollen, has a discharge.
To keep the wound clean you can simply wash it with a mild soap and water. Be gentle. Make that a commitment to yourself. You don’t need to scrub the wound. To begin with, letting water run over your wound in the shower is enough to ensure it stays clean.
Preventing Blood Clots
After a caesarean, you may have been given a supply of a blood-thinning drug to reduce the risk of blood clots.
This can be administered by you at home via injection. These injections are usually given once a day for about a week after a c-section.
If you have a higher risk of blood clots, you may be required to have the injections for up to six weeks.
If this is not the case for you, avoiding blood clots is something everyone in the postnatal period benefits from being aware of.
If you sit for long periods of time, do your best to move around or, if feeding baby for long periods of time, exercise your legs every 1-2 hours.
Drinking plenty of liquids is also important.
Exercise is often named as the best way of avoiding blood clots, and all postnatal women are at increased risk of them during the first three months after birth. Exercise, though, should be approached with caution and, that word again, gentleness. Be gentle with yourself.
When you are able to begin going out for a walk once a day, in nature, is the perfect solution in the prevention of blood clots and is also wonderful for your mind. But only do this on your own timeframe. It is not a good idea to go out for a long walk in those early days. A short stroll after a week or so is wonderful progress.
Impact on Older Children
Many struggle with this…
Arriving home having been told not to lift anything, when you have a toddler at home who is used to being able to be carried or leap on you, can be challenging both physically and mentally.
Hopefully, you have some support at home with this. If not a partner, who can take over toddler-lifting duties, then friends or family who can be with you to help entertain an older child or children.
It can be challenging to manage your own emotional responses to this, but remember that the recovery period is not forever… you will, over coming weeks, be able to resume all.
Take time for you, using conscious breathwork and stretching, where appropriate, to help manage your mind. In moments of calm that follow, perhaps you can set aside a time of each day when you give your undivided attention to the older child or children, playing a game, watching something together, or reading a story, whilst someone else cares for the baby.
That said, you cannot be super human and, whilst this balance can be hard to find in the earliest days, it will be found. In the meantime: gentle. Gentle with yourself. Don’t put punishing regimes in place that mean you feel you’re constantly letting yourself and others down. A little at a time.
More Tips for a Gentle Recovery
– Rest. It’s a cliche to say sleep when the baby sleeps. But, if you can, please do.
– Accept help and support. Lots of people can find this challenging. But, if you have offers of help – babysitting, someone cooking for you, someone having the baby for a few hours for you to sleep. Take them up on it.
– Take walks in nature. Not hiking up a mountain, but a stroll through the park, or just to the corner of your road and back, noticing the trees, birds…
– Manage constipation. The hormonal shifts, weaker stomach muscles, and spending lots of time lying down can increase the occurrence of constipation which can be painful for you. Straining can injure the incision. The key here is to stay hydrated. Eat lots of fibre. You may also consider using stool softeners.
– Wear cotton high-waisted underwear and loose clothes.
– Get support with breastfeeding / optimal breastfeeding positions (Google the football hold – life changing!)
And, if there is one thing to remember it is that word: gentle.
Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with exercise. Be gentle.
